FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 4, 2015, file photo, President Barack Obama, right, meets with King Salman of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. The meeting came as Saudi Arabia sought assurances from the U.S. that the Iran nuclear deal comes with the necessary resources to help check Iran’s regional ambitions. Lawmakers returning to Washington on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015, from their summer recess are plunging immediately into bitter, partisan debate over the Iran nuclear accord. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
The balance of power can sometimes be almost as precise as an equation. Last Saturday, for example, King Salman of Saudi Arabia went to the White House and obtained a billion dollars' worth of weapons, at the same time declaring his approval of the nuclear agreement between the United States and five other major powers ("P5+1"), and Iran on the other. It was a fair bargain.
That event followed swiftly upon President Barack Obama's having all but secured himself against a resolution in Congress that could have prevented the nuclear agreement.
More than any previous U.S. president, Mr. Obama worked to tighten the sanctions on Iran. If he had not done so, the sanctions would probably have eventually withered away.
Some of the sanctions against Iran arose from the seizure of foreign assets in the Iranian revolution of 1979, and then from the war between Iraq and Iran. But the ambition of the Iranian government for nuclear weapons introduced a whole new terrifying dimension, with a prospect of numerous nuclear-armed nations. Saudi Arabia, for one, would probably have joined the "club" – with much help from Pakistan.
If the P5+1 negotiations had failed, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty might have declined into ineffectuality.
Iran is very far from being a democracy, but it has elements of voting by the people. The theocratic elite appears to understand that it needs some degree of consent, and the voters know they would be better off without sanctions.
If the Western powers had just assumed that the Iranian regime was simply irrational, then the regime would have had little or no incentive to refrain from making nuclear weapons – something like North Korea, isolated and sanctioned.
An attack on surface Iranian installations would have been too late; the testing of an actual device would have been done underground. Instead, the nuclear agreement requires frequent inspections and cutting back on much of Iran's nuclear equipment.
Who knows what a future Republican president in the U.S. would do? In any case, Mr. Obama has laid down a sensible path for his successors.